Mary Louise Weller, Actress in ‘Animal House,’ Dies at 79

Mary Louise Weller, who portrayed Mandy Pepperidge, the Pi House sorority sister and object of future U.S. senator John “Bluto” Blutarsky’s affection in Animal House, has died. She was 79.

Weller died Thursday on the day before her birthday after a brief illness, her longtime partner Michael Roy Curtis announced.

A former Ford model and longtime spokesperson for Jean Naté fragrance, Weller also played a Southern guest editor at a New York fashion magazine in the Larry Peerce-directed adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1979) and was the love interest of Chuck Norris’ character in the Hong Kong-set Forced Vengeance (1982).

Weller also showed up on such TV shows as Baretta, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, Supertrain, Vegas, Fantasy Island, CHiPs and, for her final onscreen credit, a 1983 episode of Quincy, M.E.

During her brief acting career, “I was the beautiful girl in trouble or the rich guy’s daughter who owns a Porsche and won’t give you the time of day,” she noted in a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

In the box office sensation Animal House (1978), directed by John Landis, Weller sparkled as the snooty Mandy, who’s dating the arrogant Omega House chapter president Gregory Marmalard (James Daughton).

In one scene, John Belushi’s Bluto of Delta House climbs a ladder to watch Mandy slowly disrobe in her bedroom, and in the film’s “Where are they now?” epilogue, it’s revealed that the two will marry and live in Washington, D.C., with Blutarsky in the Senate.

An only child, Weller was born in New York on Oct. 2, 1946, and raised in Westwood since she was about 10. Famed actor Danny Kaye was her godfather; he was a friend of her father, Alex, a doctor. Her mother, Annette, was a homemaker.

In one of her first acting jobs, she appeared uncredited in a party scene in Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973), starring Al Pacino.

The year 1978 was a big one for her. In addition to Animal House, she portrayed a marine biologist in the NBC telefilm Hunters of the Reef and a college student opposite Andrew Prine in the horror movie The Evil.

Weller later had a small role in the supernatural fantasy Q (1982), written and directed by Larry Cohen.

Weller acted onstage in New York; wrote a play, Four Alone, that was performed at the Greenhouse Theater in Pasadena with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; and sought to produce a film based on the life of jockey Mary Bacon before leaving show business. (Weller had trained with the U.S. Equestrian team as a teenager and loved horses; Curtis designs courses for equestrian events.)

Survivors include her cousin Sheila Weller, an author who wrote books including the 2003 family memoir Dancing at Ciro’s: A Family’s Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip and 2008’s Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation.

Asked in 2012 if she knew Animal House would be a success, Weller replied she “was pretty sure” and added: “I remember showing [the script] to Brandon Stoddard, who was head of ABC at that time. He also knew it would be an enormous hit … but he warned me that it would be the movie I would always be known for.”